Acer's Haswell-powered Chromebook brings touch to the masses

C720P goes for 7.5 hours on a single charge

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If you've been after a touch-enabled Chromebook and never fancied shelling out for Google's gorgeous but wallet-unfriendly Pixel, today's your lucky day.

Acer's C720P, which first reared its head at IDF, is the company's first Chromebook to sport a touchscreen display. It features an 11.6-inch HD LED panel (1366 x 768) and is powered by a fourth generation Intel Celeron 2955U CPU. The inclusion of Intel's Haswell chip gives it 'all day battery life', according to Acer - so long as your day lasts around 7.5 hours.

Under the bonnet is a 32GB SSD for speedy 'boot' times and fast resuming from sleep, though its size means you can opt to store files locally, should you wish. Connectivity options include USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports, HDMI and 802.11a/b/h/g/n Wi-Fi.

Price is right

The C720P may not offer the Chromebook Pixel's giddy screen resolution, but it doesn't have its heavyweight price tag (£1,029, or $1,679, or AU$1,678), either.

Acer has priced the model at €300 (around £250, or AU$448, or US$407), which lies in the same ballpark as HP's charming Chromebook 11 that retails for £230 (or rather, it did before it was pulled from the shelves due to overheating chargers).

As it's a Chromebook, you'll also get 100GB of Google Drive storage for two years before you'll be asked to stump up the cash for a yearly subscription. Acer has set a date of early December for its release.

We wouldn't be surprised to see more touch-enabled Chromebooks on the way after the latest developer test of Google Chrome revealed a slew of touchy feely functionality, including slide-to-navigate that takes you back and forward to web pages, in addition to an "enable pinch scale" option that points to pinch-and-zoom being added down the line.